PREFACE. THE author continues in this volume, and closes with it, his Popular Annals of the War. He is well aware that he has made but a rude compilation of events, in this hasty and unpretending work; but he hopes that in his four volumes of plain narrative, he has at least laid a foundation for an elaborate and well-digested History of the War, which he proposes to himself as the work of years, and entertains as the literary ambition of his life. The writer may properly say here, with the completion of this volume of hasty narrative, that he designs now to betake himself to the composition of a fair and standard history of the War in America; of which so far he has constructed scarcely more than the skeleton. Resolved as he is by just and patient labors to rescue the truth from the peculiarly industrious misrepresentation of the Yankee, and ambitious thus to do a most important service to his countrymen of the South, and duly vindicate their name to posterity, he shall, in his large and new design, trust much to their aid-especially that of their military leaders and public men-in giving him the benefit of intelligent advice, and in collecting the ill-preserved and disjected historical testimony of the struggle of the Confederates. The announcement of this new work will be shortly made in a more proper form, and with a fuller detail of the author's purposes and requests. 3 But one word more is not inappropriate here. It is to remind the people of the South that the very fact that the war has gone against them makes it more important that its records should not fall entirely to the pens of their enemies. All persons in the South who assist in gathering the true testimony of their unfortunate struggle, perform a last, but most important office of faithful love, and do a noble work in rescuing the name of a lost cause from the slanders of those who, having been our accusers and executioners in this present time, would also be our judges at the Bar of History. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Condition of the Confederacy in the early summer of 1864.-The expectations and CHAPTER II. Grant essays the passage of the Chickahominy.-BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR.-A bril- PAGE 29 CHAPTER III. Sherman's campaign in Georgia.-How parallel with that in Virginia.-The tasks CHAPTER IV. Great revulsion in the public mind of the North in the summer of 1864.-A general CHAPTER V. The business of blockade-running.-Its risks.-Interesting statistics.-Value of the Yankee raid on the Macon road.-Hood's "magnificent advance."--Bombard- CHAPTER VI. The Richmond lines.-THE FALL OF FORT HARRISON, ETC.-The attempt to retake it. 98 CHAPTER VII. Mr. Lincoln's extraordinary triumph.-Reassembling of the Richmond Congress.- 116 |